My nephew’s group of friends has to be leading the way on this. He has 4-5 friends who didn’t make it a semester at their OOS public or small private schools. One mother had paid for 4 airline tickets in the first semester for him to come ‘home’ for the weekend (and he’d run up to the state flagship to hang out with his friends), and said “I don’t care where he goes, I just want this over!” Starting Junior year next week and I think the number of friends who have transferred to the flagship is over 20. These aren’t just kids he is friendly with, these are some of his best friends from high school or his neighborhood or team sports. I think a lot of it is that they are all good friends, and those who went out of state felt like they were missing a good time at the flagship.
My daughter at a private school had a number of her friends leave the school, most in the first semester. A guy she went to high school, her best friend who she planned to room with second year, the guy who lived across the hall. All three moved ‘home’ to go to a public school.
@twoinanddone not sure what schools you are referencing but the top privates / top OoS publics have high 90s freshman retention rates. At those top schools 95-98 out of 100 return for Sophomore year.
Your daughter would certainly be in the top 25% of Illinois Tech applicants and should be invited to Scholarship Weekend. If she is truly interested in physics, then she can get an excellent preparation at any number of universities, not just the top 100 (whatever that really means) as long as the core courses are available every year. The challenge with very small programs is that they cannot offer two semester sequences of classical mechanics, electrodynamics, and quantum mechanics which are important for getting ready to enter a graduate program.
I’m happy to give more specifics about Illinois Tech and our physics program privately if you like.
illinois tech is good especially for physics
@lucysmom
many colleges that offer merit $$ have EARLY application deadlines if one wants to be considered for a scholarship- USC’s is Dec 1. That early application will NOT prevent her from also applying to other colleges ED or SCEA as well.
So be SURE to check the dates and have her apply to them first!
USC offers 100+ full tuition scholarships and 250 automatic 1/2 tuition scholarships to National Merit Scholars[ IF they are accepted at USC]
But the odds of getting one of the BIG awards are about the same as getting into Harvard.
Its also important to note that USC does not hand out those scholarships based merely on stats.
They are awarded to tip-top students that the admissions office and faculty at USC REALLY want and that usually means exceptional students who ALSO show a GENUINE interest in going to USC.
A scholarship Interview is required and the invitation for that arrives in late Jan, or Feb.
Merely submitting an application will not cut it, no matter the students stats.
@twoinanddone agreed! the people from my high school who bragged about going to some fancy east coast schools ended up coming right back the next semester because of costs. even people who only left to a school that was 2 hours away ended up coming back.
Even with perfect test scores and grades if you are accurate that her only activities were club and school sports she is unlikely to get into these top schools or merit scholarships at slightly lower schools without any other activities, leadership, community service, etc. Is it possible she will be recruited as an athlete somewhere? You should look at the list of automatic merit scholarships based upon her grades and scores. Some schools just are not financially feasible and you should let her know before she works on the applications. We have 1 school that both our kids fell in love with that just would not work at all with our budget and we were very upfront with them about that. They have a friend who goes there whose parents sold their house and are renting an apartment to make that happen. It’s a great school no doubt but we are not willing to sacrifice our financial future when there are plenty of affordable options out there. It sounds like you feel the same way you just have to convince your daughter that you will not be willing/able to pay for these schools.
Big thing is ascertaining what exactly she likes about various schools. After all, if she likes Cal, UW-Madison isn’t all that different. Not the same weather or geography, but more passionate sports (I have both as near-Ivies, BTW).
I agree with an above poster that she should look at Rochester. Also, would she consider a Womens College? It would help to know what type of environment she is aiming for. Has she visited any schools?
Her stats are excellent, and being from Wisconsin will be to her benefit if she is applying to OOS selective schools. She should have a decent chance of getting accepted at them. But to grab the golden ring of a merit scholarship, she will be competing with many, many others with at least as high stats. But that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try. If you look at the geographic breakdown of where the schools get their applicants, fewer apply from the upper midwest. She will need to have a powerful, compelling essay, and may want to Integrate aspects of her WI life experiences into it.
PurpleTitan has the spot-on list of selective schools to your south and east with good merit aid and, as he said, all limited and incredibly competitive: Duke/WashU/UVa/JHU/Emory/Vandy/BC/Wake/Rice. I’d add Carnegie Mellon, Case, Georgia Tech, Stevens and Northeastern. And in addition to the publics noted by other posters, Virginia Tech Honors is excellent and has quite low OOS tuition and increased their merit scholarships. I recently went through this arduous process with my DD, trying to bag the elusive merit aid, and now I’m back again this year with DS. Best of luck.
While you mentioned that your D wishes to leave the Midwest there are two options closer to home that would be worth exploring: St. Olaf and Drake University. Both have starting price tags that are significantly below the standard 65k price tag and offer significant merit scholarships.
@NJProParent outside of grades and test scores we know nothing about the OP’s daughter. Those full tuition merit awards at those exclusive non-Ivies that interest this family often go to the top 1% of applicants at these schools. The differentiator between top academic students is the outstanding things they have done outside of the classroom. The winners are the rock stars, truly special kids who are leaders, perhaps charitable, maybe entrepreneurial, even major award winners.
Absolutely true. And OP’s daughter may be one of those.
@lucysmom We were in the same situation last year and did not get started on chasing merit aid until fall of senior year. Not ideal, but it was what it was. We started chasing merit aid AFTER we’d finished touring because…I don’t know we were living in fantasyland before that and then the reality of $65K times 4 sunk in. Anyhow this was our strategy. Oh, and our daughter had similar stats to yours with similar sort of ECs though lower GPA.
1 Settle on exactly what were the features our daughter wanted in a school. For her it was
a. Out-of-state, preferably out of region too.
b. Small liberal arts college
c. Strong in math and science
d. Cold with 4 seasons and snow in winter. Mountains not as critical as snow. Ok, as parent, I was rolling my eyes at (d) but hey it ruled out a lot of schools.
e. Strong study abroad programs (meaning lots of students do that and it’s a “thing” for the school)
f. Double majoring is common (so realistic for D who wants to double in theater/arts and science/math)
g. Rural.
2 We (her parents) settled on a $ amount per year that we felt comfortable with. There was no particular science to this. We had plenty of savings but our business is extremely cyclic and we need to be able to weather 3-4 year dry spells. We decided that we could definitely afford our in-state flagship, so that kind of gave us a ball-park. Half-ride was our ideal. Full-ride would mean that D would have to give up on a number of her items in the list above (she did not have HYP stats/ECs).
With that list it was not that hard to come up with a list of schools; D’s counselor helped once D was able to articulate the above list. Unfortunately most schools on our daughter’s dream list were very difficult to get into and didn’t offer merit aid (think, Williams/Bowdoin).
Nonetheless, our daughter made her list of ‘fantasy schools’ (lots of top LACs) and for each one, another school was paired with it that did offer merit aid. How did we find out which ones offered merit aid? This site (CC), school websites and collegedata.com using their search tool that allows you to select schools that offer merit aid. We took into consideration our daughters stats relative to the 75% for the school. It took me multiple long weekends of research (our daughter wasn’t so helpful for that part). She also choose safety schools (which gave automatic admission for her stats) that had automatic merit aid (for her test schools). She also choose a full-ride option (she was NMF). We didn’t expect she use that but if something really bad happened to our finances or business, she would be able to fund her college without our help.
How’d it turn out? Good. DD is going to St Olaf in the fall.
Many of our friends were in the same situation—meaning EFC did not feel doable/reasonable and they needed to pursue schools that that fit the students goals and that would not be an unmanageable financial burden to the family. Some went to state schools (Montana State and Colorado State) which are quite strong in their areas of interest and extra-curriculars they wanted to pursue. (There is a western consortium that students in the west can take advantage of for in-state tuition at out-of-state schools). Others were keen on So Cal LACs and ended up at USC and some colleges in that area where they succeeded in getting merit offers. A number ended up choosing our in-state flagship in the end. It all depended on what their student was looking for in a school and the offers they got.
What I regret? If I could do it over, I would have encouraged our daughter to apply to a few more mid-ranked LACs that offer merit aid. Too much time, dreaming and touring was spent on reaches that offer no merit aid. Her counselor warned our daughter about this. But all us were too swayed by “prestige” early on to see all the fantastic other schools out there.
All we know outside the classroom is:
“Extra curricular so are limited to club and Jv level sports.”
@liska21 How did you pair dream schools with realistic schools? Do you mean you would consider a school like Williams a “dream” school and then find another school similar to it as the equivalent realistic school? Willing to share any of your match ups?
@homerdog Yes, that was the idea to pair ‘dream’ schools with realistic schools. They weren’t equivalent, but it was a way to sort though so many schools. It started with conversations about the dream schools. “Tell me about those schools and what you like about them.” I took notes and then narrowed it down to the list I posted.
The ‘dream’ schools were highly selective and ‘intense’. It turned out after thinking back on all the schools that daughter visited that she wasn’t so attracted to ‘intense’, so the pairing were meant to match other features.
As I mentioned, one thing I regretted it that I didn’t insist on more pairings. By the end, I was kind of exhausted and stressed by the process and was happy she’d had a couple. But for what it’s worth here are the limited ones she had:
Carleton — St Olaf
Reed — Lewis & Clark (decided not to apply to either; too close to home; too urban)
Colorado College — Whitman (didn’t apply to the latter; too close to home. Arg!)
Bowdoin — Bates (the latter doesn’t give merit, but was easier to get into)
Williams/Bowdoin — Union College (NY) (pretty different but a school recommended to her by 2 advisors; in the end didn’t apply there either, sigh.)
My DD also considered, and was accepted at, Carleton. She will be at St. Olaf this fall. We could not justify $250,000 for undergrad (no merit aid to speak of) and “intense” was not necessarily a selling point.
It is good to look at other comparisons than just ranking from US News, such as:
–Rank of all life science PhDs produced in the last 10 years (Carleton was #1, St. Olaf #4)
–Rank of best undergraduate teaching (Carleton #1, St. Olaf #6)
It wasn’t for us a $250k difference.